Goals

Together Duke outlines four goals that will bring new distinction to Duke over the next decade: investing in the faculty, providing a transformative educational experience for all students, strengthening our capacity to address global challenges, and creating a supportive environment, culture and campus community.

Goal 1: Invest in the Duke faculty as scholars and leaders of the university’s intellectual communities

We seek to attract, retain, and nurture a diverse community of faculty of true distinction, where distinction is understood to include both powerful intellectual creativity and the eagerness to stimulate the creativity of students and fellow scholars. We will support all research that advances the frontiers of knowledge. We will commit our time, energy, and financial resources to build the natural sciences so they can be as distinctive for Duke as are our humanities, social sciences, and professional school programs. We will broaden the diversity and foster the excellence of our faculty and support them through mentoring and leadership development programs that span all career stages and encompass all faculty ranks.

Goal 2: Provide a transformative educational experience for all students

This plan views all students—undergraduates, graduate students, and professional students—as partners in the process of inquiry and discovery. It seeks to engage and support them in their intellectual pursuits and challenge them to learn and grow, so they leave Duke fully aware of their potential and capable of making the most of their own talents and those with whom they will work. As such, this plan underscores signature learning communities that emphasize vertically-integrated, team-based experiences. This plan also creates opportunities for graduate and professional school students to prepare for a wide array of career options, strengthens efforts to diversify our graduate and professional schools, and addresses issues of access and affordability.

Goal 3: Strengthen Duke’s capacity to address global challenges for communities across the world

Duke’s success in interdisciplinarity, globalization, and knowledge in the service of society has set the stage for sustained engagement with the many challenges facing local, national, and global communities. We will deepen Duke’s leadership in strategic areas such as population health, energy and water resources, and race, religion and citizenship. To complement this approach to engaged research and learning, we plan to create a suite of global offices, enhance the Duke in DC office and create stronger connections to our local and regional communities. Our goal is to achieve earlier, deeper, and more sustained two-way engagement with external communities and organizations.

Goal 4: Create a supportive environment for research, learning and academic community

Empowering Duke faculty to achieve research distinction, providing a meaningful education to all students, and strengthening our ability to address local to global challenges requires strong, creative, diverse, and inclusive communities at all levels—on our campus, in our schools and units, in our offices and elsewhere. We will invest in spaces that facilitate serendipitous interactions and the communal engagements envisioned in this plan. Understanding that a conducive physical environment alone will not produce the kind of university society that lives up to Duke’s promise, we will do the hard work to foster a vibrant community in which new ideas and collaborations flourish.

Take a look at the initiatives helping to Duke achieve these goals and see the progress we’ve made.

View the plan to read more about the initiatives planned within each of the goals.